Authors and Audiences: Popular Canadian Fiction in the Early Twentieth Century

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

Clarence Karr’s cultural history of the development of popular
Canadian fiction offers a unique perspective on early 20th-century
writers as well as interesting revelations concerning the popularity of
Canadian authors beyond our own borders. Karr’s focus on the reception
of these works by ordinary readers, and his examination of the impact of
these writers on international audiences, represent areas of Canadian
literary history that have hitherto been overlooked. By examining the
broad range of factors that played a role in popular authorship—fan
mail, literary agents and publishers, the popularity of specific genres,
an author’s own literary development, his or her relationship with the
movie industry, the surrounding cultural climate—Karr attempts to
legitimize popular fiction by placing the works of popular Canadian
authors within the context of the international history of the book as
well as that of an emerging modernity.

Karr focuses on five authors—Ralph Connor, Robert Stead, Nellie
McClung, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Arthur Stringer—all of whom were
very popular in their times, both in Canada and abroad. His detailed
discussions of their respective works and careers, and their often
difficult relationships with the publishing and movie industries that
established their popularity, sheds light on the machinations of the
book industry that is rarely glimpsed in critical studies. The writers
are looked at from a variety of perspectives, from the personal impact
they and their works had on readers to their international popularity.

Karr’s approach provides a refreshing contrast to the usual critical
stance which rejects their popular fiction as sentimental and populist.
Yet the result is a very dense and complex argument that is often
overwhelming in the sheer breadth of the subject matter.